That is all and good if the MD-80 fills those seats, which would have to have the same price per seat for the comparison to work. The problem is that on many E-140 routes the MD-80 might only be 1/2 full, and half of those seats sold will be at cheap rates to try to cover the costs of the flight, which attempts to compete with a low cost carrier, which we just can't.

The mistake many pilots make is that you can't compare apples and oranges as they do with hub and spoke -vs- low cost carriers; -where the hub and spoke ticket prices vary greatly (first class/coach, point to point/connection, domestic/international) whereas the LCC tickets are more uniform. One connecting passenger on a E-140 can pay for the whole flight and part of the next one to support the frequency, which attracted the international customer in the first place. Without frequency to the hub, and connection to those smaller cities in general, you might not fill that international flight. That is where market share comes in.

So the EMB-140 might have more costs per seat mile, but it's revenue per seat mile is much higher on average because a larger percentage of the aircraft is higher priced tickets. And without frequency those high priced international first class tickets would go to the competition.

Costs per available seat mile is only part of the equation for hub and spoke. LCCs have a much easer equation, where lowest Costs per seat mile are much more critical. I suspect that is where Boyd goes wrong so consistently.

 

All that was true in the 90's and early 2000's. A lot has changed since then. Gone are the $2500 walk up cash cow business travelers throwing around company gold cards like dealers at Vegas. Even a fuel sucking pig like an MD80 will fly 3 for the price of 2 when compared to an ERJ/CRJ. So the mainline plane doesn't have to be full to make sense. It doesn't even have to be 2/3 full to make sense, as odds are you wouldn't have year round 100% load factors on any 2 consecutive RJ's either. While the lease numbers go up for newer mainline planes, the fuel and maintenence numbers go down with newer planes and as fuel stays high I suspect that's an even bigger deal.

Plus mainline can control its own product and never has to get into spats with itself about FFD's and performance metrics. Also, other than the leases, mainline can increase or decrease utilization significantly without worrying about long term contracts with the regionals. Many of which are remaining balls and chains from the albatross of a massive regional fleet that's no longer needed.

Also, the differences between a "LCC" and a "legacy" are blurring more and more by the day. SWA is very much a hub and spoke carrier. So is JB. So was AT. While these airlines (particularly SWA) may indeed do more "point to point" than a legacy, the differential just isn't that staggering. As the Wright fades away SWA's route structure will see even less point to point as all that was done out of legal necessity. Again, there will still be some, and likely more than at so called legacies, but the difference and cost gaps are narrowing significantly.

Newer ponzi scheme airlines will always pop up with new planes with no MX, Chapter 7-like start up pay and regional ramp agent benefits for everyone and of course zero longevity on top of it all. This goes for regionals too BTW, which is a permanant destabilizing force in that sector as well, in addition to the garden variety cut throat deam me an ace predatory bargaining thats common. But things are different for the airlines now than they were back when each one had thousands of RJ's on order with the intent to raid everyone's hub and small markets once or twice per hour with miracle RJ's.

Mainline flying makes more sense to more and more markets once again. Regional flying is an over used burden the legacies are shackled with and have to find some place for until the long, drawn out process of reducing further can be accomplished. That is, unless mainline pilot groups give up more scope. Then you will see one more regional growth wave before even more fierce bargaining takes place come contract time. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

There will always be a marginal need for some 50-70 seat aircraft to fill in gaps here and there. But they were never needed in anywhere the numbers that were ordered and we're seeing that play out now. Management rolled the dice that they weren't gap fillers but rather some new world order of how things would be done. They appeared right for a brief snapshot in history, but we now see how insanely and comically wrong they were. We will see some smaller RJ's around for a long time, but not nearly as many as we have today. Not even close. We are in the process of correcting one of the failed legacy management mistakes of the previous reigns of incompetence.

 

amazing if the big lesson in all of this is that majors should have flown their own passengers all along, versus send them to the Eagles, Comairs, etcs of the world.

 

There are a couple wild cards that are of interest. The Century CS-300 Canadair (120-140 seats) and the MRJ-90 (86-96 seats), both of which are in the scope prohibited range for most major scope agreements, but both also incorporate the newer geared turbofan, as in the Airbus NEO, which is a game changer. (on the order of 15+ percent fuel savings)

What I have to wonder is what Trans States (50 orders/50 options MRJ-90) and Chataqua (40/40 CS-300) are thinking by placing large orders of each. They each represent major investments into aircraft with no codeshare applicability.

Are they going to go it alone? They have to have a plan for such an investment. Any guesses? I think these orders were made over a year ago. I am sure that the AMR bankruptcy and potential Scope concessions are of interest to those operators.

 

Modern MBA managers aren't that smart. They had outsourcing fed to them constantly as the ultimate way of saving money. They can't get away from that mindset....

 

I'm guessing they ordered them thinking they can use then for multiple things.

1) Fly them under a FFD contract, which is highly unlikely.

2) Defer/sell deliveries

3) Lease them to other airlines.

 

They still do clamp. Only now it's called code share.

 

Let's not forget that you can easily replace the 3 to 4 RJs a day to smaller destinations with 2 73s a day. The small town Chamber of Commerce might not like the reduction of service, but the same number of passengers will be accommodated.

Sorry if they're inconvenienced, but that's the economics of today's airline business. The additional benefit of dumping RJs is congestion reduction at hub airports.

 

you gotta wonder how profitable running 5 RJ's a day versus 2 737's a day is, say, to Midland, TX. I mean how many LBS of Jet-A does one RJ burn X 5. etc etc.

The other argument of "yeah but 10 filled seats on a 737 is worse than 10 on an RJ" doesn't fly because total pax load spread amongst the scheduled flights should be the same. Sure, some flights are gonna be light sometimes, welcome to the airline biz

But from a marketing/business standpoint, as Grandma Passenger, I would rather board a 737 than an ATR

maybe we will all return to the "good old days" of commuters/regionals flying J-31's and Bandits

that plus 1500/500 required just to get hired as FO on the Bandit

 

this is what is happening now with the jfk - bos route now, right? no more eagle, three flights on the 73 instead, all full